Two-day workshop organized by the UCLA Richard Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History and co-sponsored by the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History, UCLA Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, and UCLA Promise Armenian Institute.

Friday, May 29, 2026 to Saturday, May 30, 2026
10:00 AM - 6:00 PM (Pacific Time)
UCLA Faculty Center, Sequoia Room

To watch via the Zoom Webinar platform, click here. 

DAY 1 - MAY 29, 2026

10:00 AM - 10:10 AM | WELCOME & OPENING REMARKS

Sebouh D. Aslanian and Sona Tajiryan

10:10 AM - 10:30 AM | Framing Address

Sebouh D. Aslanian
Through the Eye of a Needle: Global Microhistory and Armenian Early Modernity

10:30 AM - 12:30 PM | PANEL 1: THE MAGICAL WORLD OF ARMENIAN PRINT

Discussant: Dr. Sona Tajiryan

Aram Ghoogasian (UCLA)
The Uses and Misuses of Early Modern Books, 1512–1800

Anush Apresyan (Matenadaran-Mesrop Mashtots Research Institute)
The Mekhitarists’ Contribution to Early Modernity: Abbot Mekhitar in Armenian Old Printed Books

Hratch Kestenian (Orient-Institut Beirut)
Making Medicine Legible: Mik‘ayēl Rēstēn Tēr-Petrosean and Early Modern Armenian Medical Print

12:30 PM - 02:00 PM | LUNCH BREAK

02:00 PM - 04:00 PM | PANEL II: OBJECTS IN MOTION: MATERIALITY, POWER, AND PATRONAGE

Discussant: Dr. Sebouh D. Aslanian (UCLA)

Ani Margaryan (Soochow University)
Patronage, Materiality, and Identity: A Microhistorical Inquiry into Armenian Mercantile Networks through Objets d’Art

Emma Harutyunyan (Harvard)
Liturgical Objects and the Construction of Patronal Identity

Sona Tajiryan (Independent Researcher)
A Merchant’s Extraordinary Gem Portfolio: An Early Modern Phenomenon?

04:00 PM - 06:00 PM | PANEL III: MOBILITY AND MEMORY IN PERIPHERAL AND URBAN SPACES AND LIVED EXPERIENCE

Discussant: Dr. S. Peter Cowe (UCLA)

Naira Poghosyan (Yerevan State University)
Armenians in the Ottoman Province: A Microhistorical Reading of Hakop Divrikts‘i’s Chronicle (1759–1783)

Başak Yağmur Karaca (USC)
Diaspora in Built Form: Armenian Mobility and Commercial Buildings in Eighteenth-Century Intra-Muros Istanbul

Haykuhi Muradyan (Yerevan State University)
A Microhistory of the Armenian Church of Dhaka (1781): Diaspora, Mobility, and Memory

07:30 PM - 10:00 PM | DINNER (BY INVITATION ONLY)

At Professor Aslanian's home

DAY 2 - MAY 30, 2026

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM | PANEL IV: HISTORIES OR STORIES? WORDS AND LITERATURE AS WITNESSES TO INTERACTION, MIGRATION, AND IMAGINATION

Discussant: Dr. Maran Momdjian (UCLA)

Suman Pal (University of Calcutta)
Grigor Harutiunian in Eighteenth-Century Bengal: Diaspora and Historical Imagination

Kristine Baghdasaryan (Pázmány Péter Catholic University/Free University of Berlin)
Armenian Words and Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Dede Qorqud Epic, c. 1512–1789

Vera Sahakyan (Matenadaran-Mesrop Mashtots Research Institute)
Surviving Memory: Shah Abbas’s Deportations and the Transmission of Environmental Toponyms

12:00 PM - 01:30 PM | LUNCH BREAK

01:30 PM - 03:30 PM | PANEL V: CONFESSIONALISM BETWEEN TEXT AND TRIBUNAL: VERNACULAR CULTURE, IMPOSTURE, AND THE LAW

Discussant: Dr. Hagop Gulludjian (UCLA)

Anna Ohanjanyan (Matenadaran Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts)
Confessional Mobility and Imposture: A Microhistory of an Armenian “False Priest” in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman World

Sebouh D. Aslanian (UCLA)
Inquisitorial Ashkharhabar: A Microhistory of Zaccaria Ter Martirosean and the Vernacular Turn in Manila, c. 1740–1760

Yavuz Aykan (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
From the Subject of Desire to the Subject of Law: Towards a Microhistory of Metropolitan Toros in Ottoman Trabzon, 1723

03:30 PM | Closing & Farewell

Download file: microhistories-of-armenian-early-modernity-2j-phq.pdf